Canvas is open source, but its cloud services ransomware attack really hurts

It's "the biggest student data privacy disaster in history" - even though the core platform is open source.

Notable links: May 8, 2026

Building a civic information economy, not cultures of extraction.

Plugging the gaps won't save news. It's time to redesign

"Journalists, cultural workers, content creators, and other trusted messengers are enabling better civic insight for communities. How do we economically support the civic information future that society needs?"

The way to save news is not to create monopolistic monocultures

"Why, a funder asked me recently, do two intermediaries this funder saw as offering duplicative services both still exist? Because you—and your funder colleagues—let them, I said." But consolidation is a dangerous road.

Open source maintainers need to go in with open eyes

"To labour out of love, and to choose to share their work freely in a market society, OSS developers find themselves in a position where they are vulnerable to exploitation and harm."

Claude Opus can now identify an author from their writing

"AI only needs 150 words to identify me. What does that mean for you?"

Notable links: May 1, 2026

AI and society; and sustaining innovation has failed us.

IndieWeb Fiction Carnival: May 2026

This month's prompt is "sticks and stones will break my bones".

Matt Mullenweg thinks WordPress is in decline. He may be right

When open source becomes a bureaucracy, it stops being able to innovate. For a product, that can mean death.

Product-shaped or movement-shaped?

People love your work because of its impact, not how it works.

Building with love, and paying for it

How do you fund work people don't want to pay for?

That terrible Signal exploit has been fixed. We have journalism to thank for it

"Apple’s fix means iPhones should no longer save copies of deleted messages from Signal or other apps, and Apple said the patch also purges already saved and related notifications."